Cathedral White

The snow gave way, sinking me to my knees into an icy stream. It wasn’t my expletives that sent birds flying up from beneath the cliff the stream tumbled over.

I wiped my eyes in case I’d frosted them with snow. I looked over the cliff again, where something solid loomed in the mist. Something that has not been there before the mist rolled in.

I’d heard the tales of Cathedral White, but what rational mind would believe such things?

Beyond the birds, spires climbed through the mist, raising a chill to my spine that rivalled my wet feet. Shades of people frolicked on the ice clad in top hats and long cloaks that had not been worn outside a costume party for two hundred years.

I floundered out of the stream and stood, just as a cloud filtered the sun into a cold shade of purple. I wanted to run for the trees behind me but where there had been bare branches, I saw malevolent tendrils tangling in their own shadows.

Horse-drawn sleighs cantered out of the mist, following the frozen river. The people abandoned their prancing and climbed aboard for a mad gallop toward the cathedral.

The cloud rolled aside, returning the sun to its winter orange. The cathedral faded with the mist, leaving me stumbling in the snow while the cold water in my boots numbed my feet.